The England football team is at its lowest ebb but Premier League matches and other leading UK sporting events are a vital tourist attraction, official figures suggest today.

In a boost for tourism in the runup to the London 2012 Olympics, the survey of foreign visitors reveals that 3 million spent £2.3bn on watching and playing sport in 2008, the latest year for which figures are available.

VisitBritain, the national tourism authority, says analysis of the figures collated from surveys of about 50,000 international travellers at UK ports and airports by the Office for National Statistics also shows the strength of international participation in amateur sport, from playing golf to getting covered in mud in cross-country running.

VisitBritain says nearly 2 million tourists and visitors watched sport, with competitions at famous venues such as Lord's or Hampden Park helping to pull in £1.3bn while similar sums were spent by the 1.4 million people who played amateur sport at more modest locations in 2008.

VisitBritain's chief executive, Sandie Dawe, said she was encouraged by the figures as they suggest growing popularity for British sport in the runup to the Olympics: "Millions are travelling to watch our world-class events and participate in our famous, sometimes quirky, sporting traditions. It is a hugely encouraging sign that Britain has the sporting expertise to stage an Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012 that we hope will win the hearts of the world and deliver a tourism legacy, jobs and economic growth for this country."

The most popular sport for visitors to watch was football, with 1.2 million overseas spectators going to a match. Of those foreign fans who feel the need to travel to watch British and other international stars play football, 88,000 Germans and an estimated 75,000 Spaniards watched British club games. Some 52,000 Dutch fans also attended British stadiums.

The second most popular sport was horse racing, with crowds totalling 6 million, many from abroad, flocking to more than 8,000 races annually at courses all over the country.

The top nation of overseas sports spectators in Britain were from Ireland, with nearly 400,000 visitors watching an event in 2008. Eight out of the top 10 nationalities were European, along with 176,000 Americans and 85,000 Australians.

Golf was a big attraction for Americans – 94,000 came over in 2008 to play. They were joined by 66,000 Germans, 44,000 French, 30,000 Spanish and 28,000 Irish. Sporting visitors spend more than tourists with no sporting itinerary: £900 rather than £500 per trip.

The figures also revealed that most sporting visitors came to Britain without children, often as groups of friends who share similar interests and a taste for a particular game.